


The Way the World Ends

by ifeelbetter



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, PTSD, mentions self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 07:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1419400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter/pseuds/ifeelbetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of Coulson dying to unite the Avengers, instead of pulling together at the last minute to save the day, instead of saving Hawkeye from Loki’s control in time to take part in the Battle of New York, instead of all that….Clint Barton wakes up from Loki’s control with a splitting headache after the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way the World Ends

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the lovely beta work of cinque-spotted and ofgeography. Couldn't have finished without you lovely ladies!

_Those who have crossed  
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom  
Remember us—if at all—not as lost  
Violent souls, but only  
As the hollow men  
The stuffed men._

Clint opened his eyes which came as a surprise. It wasn’t so much the physical motion as much as the agency behind the active verb that surprised him. His eyes--like the rest of him--had not been his own for a long time.

He may not have been in the habit of being the man in charge of his own head, but he could at least remember how to do the morning-after roll call to check in with his limbs. And, sadly for his life experience, the “morning after” had tended to include stitches and concussions far more often than it had involved sex.

What he could tell immediately was: his head hurt like a motherfucker. Other parts of his body were chiming in with similar complaints, but the headache really took the cake. 

He put a hand gingerly up to his forehead to test for sensitivity and his fingertips came back red.

He stared at the blood.

Red was a hell of a color. It was a beautiful, decidedly not ice-blue color. And, again, that came as a bit of a surprise.

He blinked. 

Behind his hand, he could see the blue of the sky. There was always going to be more blue, wasn’t there?

And then he got to his feet because Clint Barton always got back on his feet, it was a rule. But, really, he got to his feet because his back was chiming in with the rest of his aching body parts and “up” seemed the lesser of two evils.

There were arrows scattered around him where he’d been lying in the plaster dust. The quiver on his back was entirely empty. By the time he had the arrows from the ground neatly back in their slots, he’d picked a direction and he was pretty sure it was west.

The sun was going down in that direction anyway. Unless Loki’s invasion had changed a lot more than Clint had been aware of, that made the direction he started walking in west.

* * * 

He threw up twice along the highway--that or he threw up once and it sort of doubled just like the road kept doubling. Even without the incessant pressure at his temple, he recognized the signs of a good old concussion. 

He sighed.

Just his luck, wasn’t it? The universe couldn’t give him a break on this one, not even after raining shit down on his head for three months straight. And it was a shitty way to kill him, you know? He’d always assumed the universe would do something big and bloody for his curtain call--instead he got a concussion, a pool of vomit, and a desert. 

“Fuck this,” he said and sat down. All the triumph of having gotten to his feet earlier had faded away. Nothing felt right, not even the clumping of his feet into the sand. 

He’d take two seconds for this concussion and then he would _not_ die. Then he could call today a victory.

“Fuck _all_ of this,” he said to the pool of vomit. Two pools. 

Whatever.

* * * 

It wasn’t exactly a surprise that a “two second break for concussion” turned into a “pass out on the side of the road, disgustingly near but victoriously not _in_ a pool of your own vomit.” Maybe Clint’s bar for what constituted a surprise had been dramatically lowered or maybe this wasn’t his first rodeo. Either way, sometimes you end up sleeping next to your vomit. Happens to the best of us.

But he had to tick a couple of things off in the surprise column again when he woke up. The first was the thing that woke him--someone had flicked his ear.

“You couldn’t have stayed down for two more minutes to give me a chance to get to you? Oh no, Clint Barton goes for walkabouts with concussions,” the voice (presumably) attached to the ear-flicking said. “How many times are you going to make me pull you out of your own vomit, Barton?”

Clint opened an eye.

“ _Near_ my own vomit,” he corrected. His mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls and death, though, so it sounded more like, “Bhear guh bown bahmbit.”

“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” Natasha said, shifting the bazooka on her shoulder. 

“Hey, Tasha,” he said, forcing his voice past the grossness in his mouth. He tried to push himself up on his elbows, but he slid slowly back down. “I may have thrown up twice.”

“No,” she said. “Just the one you’re sleeping next to.”

“Oh, good,” he said and felt like he had a couple more miles to sink even though he was flat on the ground already.

The hard bit was over, though. He had Natasha back. She’d take care of things for a bit.

So he passed out again, confident she would get the vomit out of his hair.

* * * 

He opened his eyes...again, cause for celebration. His head hurt marginally less and all he remembered of the day before was that Tasha came for him. So. Wins in both columns.

He sat up and it went a lot better than it had when Tasha had found him. He got all the way up to his elbows and had the wherewithal to take in his surroundings.

He was on a bed--score. Really score. This might qualify for the scorest of all the scores. The bed was surrounded by half-unpacked boxes of guns and ammunition. There was an American flag caught between two of the boxes, sort of draping one of the corners of the room. 

Clint formed a conclusion.

“Tasha, are we staging a revolution?” he called. “This looks a lot like a homespun revolution.”

Something clattered to the floor in the next room. 

The person who appeared in the doorway was not in fact Tasha. And Clint decided his concussion might not be as far along towards healing as he thought it might be because it was definitely Phil Coulson wearing an apron and the sort of thick yellow rubber gloves that television told him were appropriate for washing the dishes if one was the sort to have (a) a home and (b) dishes. Phil Coulson had barely fit into the former category and for all that Clint had ever seen had never touched the latter in his life.

“Something like that,” Coulson said. Clint backtracked a moment or two to get back to his question. Then he decided his subsequent questions needed answering first.

“Where’s Tasha?” he asked.

Something flashed across Coulson’s face faster that Clint--in his muggy, confused, and aching state--could fathom. It was gone quickly enough but Clint had thought for a moment it had been--

Well. It couldn’t have been. So.

“She’s in medical. Her mission was a success and I recommended she take the opportunity to check in.”

Clint snorted fondly. 

“You sent her to the principal’s office,” he said, more happy to be alive than he would have given himself credit for feeling a few days ago. More happy to be alive than he could honestly comprehend.

“You need more sleep,” Coulson said. “Our experience with breaking Loki’s control tells us his victims accumulate a significant sleep deficit under his spell. Sleeping should be your priority.”

Clint did feel his eyelids drooping again. He fought to stay awake.

“I’d like to trust you, sir,” he said, losing the track of his own thoughts. “But I’m not sure I’ll still be in charge after I close my eyes.”

Coulson came closer to his bed. He did something near the foot of the bed and somehow Clint began to feel a warmth in his feet. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, agent,” Coulson said. “I’m the one who’s in charge.”

Clint nodded. 

If Coulson was in charge, he was safe.

* * * 

Clint woke up again to the sound of raised voices in the next room.

“This isn’t a secure facility and I’ll be damned if I risk the safety of the entire command structure--”

Ah. That was Fury. His anger always had that crescendo effect to it where you were being yelled at before you were entirely aware he’d raised his voice.

Clint didn’t need prompting to understand who they were talking about. His head was clearer than it had been, but that only made him more aware that he was a threat to those around him. Of course he was. Loki had--whatever it had been was still in there somewhere, it had to be. 

“--your damned antiquated sensibilities are blinding you to the ramifications of harboring one of--”

He’d just find his quiver. If he could find his quiver, he’d get somewhere he couldn’t hurt anyone and...well. He’d do what he needed to.

First he’d have to stand up. One challenge at a time.

He tottered a little, clutching at the headboard to keep upright. He gritted his teeth. His body would goddamn well do what he told it to do, though. It was a _rule_ , dammit, Clint Barton always stands back up. If he couldn’t make his body stand, then he was no better than he had been. No better than he had been before Tasha had done what he couldn’t, no matter how hard he’d tried--

The feeling was terrifyingly familiar. He could feel the old panic start--the panic of seeing through his own eyes at a distance and only seeing blue. If he could just get his feet on the floor, then he’d be out of the blue. He just needed his feet to goddamn _listen_.

But it was different now. This wasn’t Loki’s ice-blue world and his feet steadied when he told them to. The breath that had caught somewhere in his throat released.

Fury was right. He wasn’t safe to be near.

Coulson’s voice cut through the rant that had been running throughout Clint’s efforts to stand upright.

“I will remind you,” Coulson said, clear and unwavering, putting a distinct emphasis on the next word, “ _sir_ , what the terms of my continued assistance in your cause were.” There was a tiny pause. “And you are fully aware that where I go, the Avengers go.”

Fury must have thrown something because there was a crash like porcelain shattering against a wall. 

“We don’t have time for these sentimental distractions!”

Clint didn’t really need to hear more.

He’d worked with Coulson for about a decade on and off. He’d seen enough of the man to know he had a soft streak in his soul somewhere that made him cling to lost causes. It had been the making of Clint once, that streak of Coulson’s. He’d be damned if he paid Coulson back like this.

His legs stopped shaking. Rule number one was that Clint Barton always stands back up, but rule number two had been “Clint Barton makes good on Coulson’s investment” for a very long time too. He took a deep breath and walked toward the doorway.

“He’s right, Coulson,” he said quietly. “I’m not safe to be around. You have to see that.”

Coulson and Fury had been sitting at a rickety kitchen table. Fury’s chair was knocked to the floor and, just as Clint had guessed, the teapot was shattered against the far wall. Coulson got to his feet when Clint spoke.

“You should be resting, agent,” he said, his voice changing entirely. He held out his vacated chair to Clint. It was that soft streak, right there. A mile wide and soft as can be. 

“I don’t want to kill any more good people,” Clint said. He’d be as direct as he could be, try to speak to Coulson’s rational side. “I don’t want--I can’t--” He’d tried so hard to make the sentence rational in his head, but it sounded like begging when the words hit the air. 

Coulson put him firmly into the chair.

“Did I give you authorization to take command of this mission, agent?” Coulson said. 

He crouched down beside the chair and Clint couldn’t help resting his forehead against Coulson’s. 

“Phil, I _can’t_ \--” he tried to say. He didn’t know what the sentence could have been, but Coulson didn’t let him finish.

“You don’t have to, Clint.” Coulson’s hand was a warm spot on his cheek, solid and secure. Clint tilted into it, heart aching. “I’ve got this,” Coulson said. 

Oh well. If concussions get two seconds, Clint could spare a moment for breathing in and out on Coulson’s beat. 

“I think you know the way out, Director,” Coulson said. 

Fury would have more to say on this, they all knew that. And Fury knew they all knew that, clearly, so he left without any posturing. 

“I’m stretched thin, Cheese,” he said, holding the door open. “I can’t be your cavalry if the shit hits to fan.”

“I think I have my own cavalry, sir. We’ll be here when you need us.”

Fury nodded and closed the door behind him.

“I think you could use a short walk before I put you back to bed,” Coulson said contemplatively.

* * * 

The “short walk” was a tour of a homespun revolution. 

Clint had so called it. 

It was mostly tents and the sort of buildings that can only be called “buildings” because there hadn’t been a stiff breeze to knock them over yet. These people were refugees for the most part but Clint knew the way military people hold themselves, even after they’ve been out of service for a while. A lot of these people were fighters of one stripe or another. 

A couple children ran past. They weren’t laughing. The smallest one turned and ran backwards for a second, clearly assessing Clint. She turned around again.

Something about her--Tasha had had eyes like that when he’d brought her in. 

Children who’d seen war.

“What are you showing me?” he asked.

Coulson sighed. “I didn’t have time to clean house,” he said, his mouth quirked slightly to one side. “Don’t mind the mess.”

“Phil--”

“It’s what it looks like, Clint,” Coulson said. They turned a corner and he stopped. He turned around, his hands spread wide. “The phrase that springs to mind is, ‘ _fighting the good fight._ ’”

And there, sitting on the ground in circle, was what was left of the Avengers Initiative. A bit worse for wear, battered and bruised, but ready to go. Clint knew them all. He’d fought them all in the past three months. What he hadn’t known about them before he was turned, the stuff SHIELD had written down, he’d learned. He knew all about Tony Stark’s weak heart, Steve Rogers’s three-day-old wound on his left ribcage, Thor’s girlfriend in Norway. He’d reported all of it to Loki and he’d been the one to stab Captain America on his left ribcage three days ago.

He cleared his throat.

“So, um,” he said to the group, raising one hand in a tiny wave. “Heeeeeey, everybody.”

Coulson rolled his eyes.

* * * 

Turned out Natasha’s word counted for a lot. Turned out Coulson’s counted for a lot. 

Turned out Clint’s certainty that everyone would be better off if he took care of business didn’t count for shit. (Tasha hit him on the back of the head when it came up, but in that special way where he knew she cared. The Hulk-dude looked down at his feet and drew in a little around himself.)

Turned out the world needed saving and the Avengers Initiative was moving out and it turned out nobody had thought to cross Clint’s name off the list.

* * * 

Clint was cool with staging a last stand back in New York. He was cool with finishing what the Avengers had started three months ago when they’d closed the portal, but still were overwhelmed by the ground troops Loki already had in play. 

He’d told Tasha: putting an arrow in Loki’s eye might make it worth breathing tomorrow. She’d nodded.

So he was cool with the plan to move out in two days and he was cool with telling the team everything he knew about Loki’s operation--which was admittedly only the stuff a grunt knows, but people forget that grunts have to be everywhere and he knew enough. Clint had a lifetime of being a grunt to draw from. 

But the last part of the plan--sort of the key part really--was the part Clint was not cool with. And they’d known he wouldn’t like it, _nobody would have liked it_ , so they sent Coulson in with it at the last minute.

Clint looked at the bright blue contact lenses in Coulson’s outstretched hand.

There weren’t a lot of things Clint was above doing. He’d eaten garbage straight off the street, he’d lied to a nun, he’d shot friends, he’d killed family with his bare hands, he’d curled around Loki and loved him in a stupid, blank way. There was nothing too low for Clint Barton. That was rule three.

But somehow begging seemed undignified.

He took a deep breath.

“Is it gonna--” he started to ask and then shut his mouth. He’d keep his voice steady and he’d ask it like he was a reasonable person who had reasonable questions that weren’t at all crazy.

“Is it gonna make everything look blue?” he asked, internally watching his breathing. He already knew the answer and his heart was clenched up like something was crying inside him.

Because he would be _so very fine_ with dying in big last stand, but if the world turned blue again….

Well. 

“Yes,” Coulson said not unkindly, but firmly. “But I’ll be in your ear this time.”

Clint’s hands shook around the open contact case. He knew damn well he wouldn’t be able to get the van through the barricade if he didn’t wear them. There would be no great last stand, there would only be more awful things on the list of stuff Clint Barton did with his life. 

Tasha always talked about ledgers. Clint didn’t think he owed anyone anything and he sure as hell was never going to be able to change the sum total of things under the umbrella term “shitty” that he’d played a part in. But it was one thing to know you were going to go out on a deficit and another to sit down when the world needed you to stand up.

Rule one. Clint Barton always stands up. 

“Yes, sir,” he said. He tilted his head upward and dropped the contacts in one at a time. He shut his eyes and breathed, willing himself to open to ice blue and--if luck was on his side--not throw up in Phil Coulson’s face. 

“Clint,” Coulson said. Clint kept his eyes shut. 

_Count of three,_ he told himself, bile already sharp on the back of his throat. _Count of three and then you just fucking do it._

“Clint,” Coulson said again and this time Clint felt a steady, cool hand on his cheek.

The surprise of it made him open his eyes. Coulson was so close that Clint could feel his breath on his cheek now. And he was all ice blue, pale and cool and watching Clint.

“Sir?” he asked. Clint was shaking so hard, Coulson must have felt it. 

“Are you with me, Clint?” Coulson asked. His voice was barely above a whisper.

“Always, sir,” Clint said and moved just the hair forward it took to kiss him. Only it wasn’t a kiss, not the way Clint normally did kissing. This was more like passing a breath back and forth between them, straight from Phil’s lungs into Clint’s. There was nothing but the slightest of touch between lips.

“Hey, Phil,” Clint said, pulling back slightly. “If I don’t die or get re-brainwashed and the world goes back to normal, would you have dinner with me?”

Coulson huffed a laugh and pressed Clint’s comm into his ear. 

“Like with candles and shit,” Clint said, just to be clear. “And like a dude with a violin.”

The comm crackled in his ear and he could hear Captain America talking in a low voice to someone.

“Tell you what, Agent Barton,” Coulson said. “You make it out alive, I’ll cook you dinner.”

“And candles?”

Coulson ducked back in quickly, just another brush of lips.

“Any way you want it.”

* * * 

There was a moment later when the contacts were still in but the fighting had already started where Clint jumped off a building. He’d had one arrow left in his quiver and he’d taken pulled it out with the grappling hook arrowhead.

But the world was swimming up and it was still all blue and it had taken all his concentration to not throw up all this time--

\--maybe falling was better. Maybe the red would block out all this blue--

“Hawkeye, do you copy?” Coulson said in his ear.

Without consciously making a decision, Clint released the arrow and the grappling line caught on a nearby ledge. He swung into a window, glass exploding all around him.

“Yeah, I copy,” he said, touching his ear. 

Coulson was right. Having him in his ear made this doable. 

He could go through hell as long as Coulson was in his ear.

**Author's Note:**

> I was asked for "post-apocalyptic" and "Coulson is in charge."


End file.
